Segregation in Education

                                           Segregation in Education

     Many people are discriminated against based on race, color of skin, and religion. This is a big challenge in many individuals’ lives. According to United States Constitution written by Thomas Jefferson, all men are created equal and everyone should have the same rights.  Discrimination starts because a specific group of people want to have more power than others. In American history African Americans were the group of people that were discriminated against because of their skin color. The major problem that African Americans are facing is discrimination in education, which causes many problems. Sixty years have passed since the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King’s dream to end segregation is still not fulfilled.

     After slavery was abolished by the 13th amendment in December 6, 1865, African Americans faced a new problem, which was segregation. African Americans were not allowed to go to schools with whites because of Jim Crow laws. Everything was separated. African Americans had their own schools, but the quality of schools was very poor. But activists thought that school integration was necessary for the blacks to have the same opportunity as whites. Brown vs. Board of education played a major role in desegregation in education. This case was about Linda Brown who attended third grade in Topeka. She traveled over an hour to get to school. She had to walk through a dangerous railroad switching facility. Her father tried to enroll her in the nearest school, which quality was very high, but this school was only for whites. She was rejected for being a African American race. The National Association for the Advancement of black People helped her father Oliver Brown to have his voice in court.  Before Brown, the court’s decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1869  helped African Americans to gain some rights, because the law was “Separate but Equal. “ Yes blacks had their own schools and colleges but facilities that white children attended had good reputations. For example, if white students graduated from good colleges, it was easier for them to find jobs. On the other hand, in schools that African Americans went to the quality of education was poor, and students had to struggle to find a job after graduation (Birzer).

     Brown vs Board of education played the major role in the desegregation of schools. In 1954 the Supreme Court issued a law to desegregate schools. This allowed African Americans to go to schools with whites and get the same quality of education. But in Little Rock, Arkansas, Governor Orval Faubus gave the order to the National Guard to not allow African American students to go to school. Faubus claimed that the National Guard was there to keep the peace. To resolve the situation, President Dwight Eisenhower ordered FBI agents to go to Little Rock and stop this discrimination (Anderson).

Sixty years have passed, and schools are not segregated anymore, but racism still remains a main problem in the United States. Many African Americans live in poor neighborhoods.

Many students are zoned, so they have to go to schools that are closer to poor neighborhoods, which means that mostly blacks go to these schools and the quality of education is low. Schools get their budgets from taxes so most likely schools that are in white neighborhoods get more money, which can help schools create more programs for students, and it also helps them to buy new equipment, for example smart boards and computers.

Black students are three times as likely as white students to be labeled as                                                          “Emotionally disturbed,” and they are put in special education classes, where they are less likely to end up with high school diploma or a quality education (Zernike). Another problem that African American students face is drug addiction. Drugs affect teenagers’ education. Research shows that 20% of African American students use Marijuana and are also involved in selling drugs in schools (“the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education”). Also dropouts among African Americans are increasing and compared to white students’ dropout rates are very high. Black students who came from poor neighborhoods tend to dropout from high schools because of their social and economical status. They don’t have any other choice, but start working in early age to support their families.

Graph below shows dropout rates of African Americans and Hispanics compared to whites (Dillon). [pic 1]

      According to Balfanz Robert, “at more than 80 percent of American’s graduation rate is at record high. More kids are going to college too. But one third of the nation’s African American and Latino young men will not graduate” (Balfanz). In this era when education is very necessary, these young men will face a bleak future. Students who do not make it out of high school mostly come from poor neighborhoods because they do not get good education at high schools, which are becoming a big problem. I know from my classmate Wisgens Denazareth. We were good friends. He came from a poor neighborhood who struggled financially. His father abandoned him when he was young and he had to support his family. The school that I went to was in a white neighborhood, but there were many African Americans who also went to my high school.  Wisgens was the smart child, but he was sent to the special classes with students who were causing problems. He wanted to go to college, but his